09 DECEMBER 2016

Hatton Impressed With Murray’s Progress

Ricky Hatton is amazed at the progress made by Martin Murray in just five years as a professional boxer.

Domestic rivals Darren Barker and Matthew Macklin have been fighting professionally for eight years and 11 years respectively, but appear to be running from their less experienced rival.

Murray (24-0-1) will be in title action at Manchester Arena on Saturday November 24 against a selected opponent – his 12 rounder one of several big supporting contests when Hatton makes his comeback against Vyacheslav Senchenko.

Hatton said: “I am over the moon with Martin Murray.

“When you look at his domestic rivals Matthew Macklin and Darren Barker from an experience point of view, he has reached their level with far less experience.

“That shows natural talent on Martin’s side.

“We sat down with Matchroom on a number of times to try and make the Darren Barker fight.

“Unfortunately Darren has been injured a number of times and that is something we will go back to.

“We thought we made the Macklin fight. We asked them what they wanted, they told us and the fight still didn’t happen.

“I think Martin is the most feared middleweight in Britain. He has been British and Commonwealth champion, drawn in a world title fight and done all that in record breaking time compared to his other rivals.

“We have tried to make fights. Martin Murray said, ‘yes’ to everything but it is Darren and Matthew who haven’t said ‘yes’.

“Next year will be big for Martin and he will get his just rewards.”

On the same bill there is world title action when Scott Quigg (24-0-1) meets Rendall Munroe (24-2-1) in a vacant interim WBA super-bantamweight title return match. Their summer showdown ended in a technical draw after three rounds because of Munroe’s cut right eye.

Sergey Rabchenko (21-0) defends his European light-middleweight crown against Frenchman Cedric Vitu (35-1), and Gary Buckland (26-2) risks his British super-featherweight title against local idol Stephen Foster Jr (30-3-1).